Nurses often go underappreciated for their life-saving work across the country

Mr. Speaker, today begins National Nursing Week. Every year at this time we celebrate and thank the hard-working nurses of Canada.

This week was chosen because on May 12, 1820, Florence Nightingale was born. If Florence Nightingale had been a man, she would not be remembered as the “Lady with the Lamp”. She would be remembered as the father of public health care. She would be remembered as the originator of statistics for the purpose of making an argument. She invented the pie chart in order to demonstrate to policy-makers how many more soldiers were dying from infectious diseases in hospitals than were dying on the battlefield.

Florence Nightingale would be remembered for many things, but as nurses can tell us, they are often underappreciated and unrecognized for their hard-working, life-saving work across the country.

For the men and women of the working nurses of Canada, we value them and we thank them.